Holocaust : Roots, History, and Aftermath

by David M. Crowe

• ISBN13: 9780813343259
• ISBN10: 0813343259
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermathtakes a fresh, probing look at one of the greatest human tragedies in modern history. Author David M. Crowe begins with a detailed overview of the history of the Jews, their two-millennia-old struggle with a larger Christian world, and the historical anti-Semitism that created the environment that helped pave the way for the Holocaust. But it would take more than traditional prejudices to bring Europe to the edge of the Shoah. It would take someone like Adolf Hitler, who blended his own hatred of the Jews with contemporary ideas about eugenics, Aryan racial superiority, and German nationalistic frustration with the post-1918 Weimar democratic experiment, to bring to life the Nazi racial policies that led to the Final Solution-the mass murder of all of the Jews in Europe.Crowe analyzes the complex origins and evolution of these policies not only toward the Jews, the Nazis' principal victims, but also toward the Roma, the handicapped, and other groups deemed racial or biological threats to Hitler's goal of creating an Aryan-pure Europe. He discusses the spread of these policies in Germany as well as throughout Europe and concludes with a detailed discussion of liberation, Displaced Persons and the founding of Israel, the major war crimes investigations and trials, and continuing international efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

Author Biography

David M. Crowe is President Emeritus of the Association for the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University and a member of the Education Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He is currently a Fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North at Carolina at Chapel Hill. His award-winning books include A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia and The Baltic States and the Great Powers: Foreign Relations, 1938-1940. He teaches at Elon University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Jewish History: Ancient Beginnings and the Evolution of Christian Anti-Judaic Prejudice Through the Reformation	p. 5
Jewish Beginnings
The Jews, Hellenism, and the Maccabean (Hasmonean) Rebellion
Roots of Anti-Jewish Sentiment: The Jewish-Greek Conflict
Judaism, Jews, and the Coming of Christianity
The Jewish War and the Great Revolt (66-70 C.E.)
Judaism, Christianity, and the Bar Kochba Rebellion
Constantine, Christianity, and the Jews
Jews in the Last Century of the Western Roman Empire
Jews in Early Medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire
The Crusades and the Jews of the Mediterranean World
Pope Innocent III and the Jews
Medieval Usury: Christians and Jews
The Myth of Ritual Murder
The Deadly Centuries: The Jews at the End of the Middle Ages
The Expulsion of the Jews from Western Europe
The Black Death
The Final Humiliation: Expulsion from Spain and Portugal
The Protestant Reformation
The Roman Catholic Church, the Jews, and the Counter Reformation
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
Jews, the Enlightenment, Emancipation, and the Rise of Racial Anti-Semitism Through the Early Twentieth Century	p. 41
The Jews in Post-Reformation Europe
The Enlightenment
The French Revolutions of 1789-1799, Napoleon I, and the Jews
The Jews in Post-Napoleonic Europe
The Intellectual and Nationalistic Origins of Anti-Semitism in the Nineteenth Century
Political Anti-Semitism in Germany, Austria, France, and Russia Prior to World War I
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The World of Adolf Hitler, 1889-1933: War, Politics, and Anti-Semitism	p. 79
Adolf Hitler: Family Roots and Questions of Jewish Ancestry
Hitler's Early Life
Hitler's Vienna Years
Hitler, Munich, and German Anti-Semitism
Hitler and World War I
Hitler, Versailles, and the Early Weimar Republic
Hitler, the Early Nazi Party, and Anti-Semitism
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The Nazis in Power, 1933-1939: Eugenics, Race, and Biology; Jews, the Handicapped, and the Roma	p. 105
Germany's Interwar Jewish Community
The Nazification of Germany and the "Jewish Question": 1933-1935
The Nuremberg Laws
The Nazi Aryan Olympics (1936)
Aryanization and the Road to Kristallnacht
The Early Campaign of Forced Sterilization
Euthanasia: Theory and Nazi Practice
The Roma (Gypsies)
Homosexuals, or Gays
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
Nazi Germany at War, 1939-1941: "Euthanasia" and the Handicapped; Ghettos and Jews	p. 149
Children's "Euthanasia" Program
Adult "Euthanasia" Program
The Road to War and the German Invasion of Poland
Racial War in Poland: Polish Christians
The Creation of the General Government: Nazi Germany's "Racial Laboratory"
The Jews in Interwar Poland
The War Against the Jews in Poland
The Physical and Economic Exploitation of the Jews in the General Government
The Nisko Plan, the Lublin Reservation, and Madagascar
The Madagascar Plan
The Creation of the Ghettos in German-Occupied Poland
Lodz (Litzmannstadt): Jews and Roma
Warsaw
Krakow (Cracow)
Rule, Life, and Work in the Krakow Ghetto
Forced Labor and Food
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Path to the "Final Solution"	p. 191
Jews in Soviet-Conquered Territory
Zwartendijk and Sugihara: Righteous Gentiles in Vilnius
Operation Barbarossa and Plans for Mass Murder
The Einsatzgruppen
The Wehrmacht
The German Invasion of the Soviet Union
Early German Killing Operations in the Soviet Union
Collaboration in Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine
Hungarian and Romanian Collaboration
The Roma and the Handicapped
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The "Final Solution," 1941-1944: Death Camps and Experiments with Mass Murder	p. 225
Planning for the Final Solution
The Transfers from the Greater Reich
Theresienstadt
Experiments with the Machinery of Death
The Wannsee Conference
The Final Solution
Chelmno
The Aktion Reinhard Death Camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka
Auschwitz
The Factory of Death: Auschwitz II-Birkenau
The Gypsy Family Camp
Medical Experiments in Auschwitz I and II
Auschwitz III-Buna/Monowitz
Resistance in Auschwitz
Majdanek
Liquidation of the Major Ghettos
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The Final Solution in Western Europe and the Nazi-Allied States	p. 283
The Holocaust in Western Europe
Belgium and Luxembourg
Denmark
France
Greece
The Netherlands
Norway
The Nazi-Allied States
Bulgaria
Finland
Hungary
Italy
Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia
The Roma in the Protectorate
Slovakia
The Roma
Romania
The Roma
Yugoslavia (Croatia and Serbia)
The NDH (Croatia)
Serbia
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
The Holocaust and the Role of Europe's Neutrals: Then and Now	p. 339
Europe's Neutrals
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
The Vatican
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
Liberation, DPs, and the Search for Justice: War Crimes Investigations and Trials in Europe, the United States, and Israel	p. 383
Liberation of the Camps
Displaced Persons: Jews and Roma
The Trials of the Major War Criminals
The Federal Republic of Germany
War Crimes Investigations and Trials in Western Europe
War Crimes Trials in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Conclusion
Sources for Further Study and Research
Glossary	p. 443
Estimates of Jewish Deaths During the Holocaust	p. 447
Estimates of Roma Deaths During the Holocaust	p. 449
Yad Vashem: Righteous Among the Nations	p. 451
SS Ranks	p. 453
German Army Ranks	p. 455
Notes	p. 457
Index	p. 490
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